


Of Mastery and Mortality, or The Capitulation of Death

by TasogareKnightErrant



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Tragedy, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:48:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28242651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TasogareKnightErrant/pseuds/TasogareKnightErrant
Summary: "The book had been an old favorite of Jeralt's. Byleth had not touched it for some time, had not even thought of it. Now just the sight of its gilded spine filled her with an uneasy sorrow, but she pulled it down anyway. Today she would need it."A collection of scattered moments in which Byleth does bitter work, building something she would rather not.
Kudos: 6





	1. Faith, Absent Foundations

**Author's Note:**

> Fic migration, so the rest should be uploaded as soon as I'm finished fiddling with tags, etc.

White Clouds, Harpstring Moon

Byleth suspected that Seteth would be much happier if he knew how little funding she was receiving from the Church of Seiros. Money talked, and although Rhea had made the incomprehensible decision to appoint Byleth to a professorship, the archbishop was apparently hedging her bets, financially speaking. Although, it was hard to imagine Rhea personally approving all the monastery expenditures; maybe it was actually Seteth who signed off on Byleth's monthly funds.

That would certainly explain the sad little coin purse sitting in the middle of her desk. She picked it up and gave it whirl by the drawstrings, the ten gold pieces light as a feather against the needs of a classroom. With a sigh she let it hang at her side and rose from her desk. Even the gold itself was an annoyance; she would have to make a trip to the moneychangers if she wanted to spend it on anything useful.

"Professor?"

Byleth looked up from the ledger on her desk. Dorothea stood in the door of the classroom that doubled as Byleth's office when she wasn't lecturing. Byleth had considered directing the students to her personal quarters if they had any concerns, but that felt strange, and she spent so much time in the classroom anyway that it made little difference to tack an office hours schedule on the bulletin board.

But Dorothea was a surprise, considering her enthusiastic choir participation and how gravely serious she was about her love life. Not to mention the whisperings of an amateur opera that Byleth had heard tell of in the dining hall.

Byleth sank back into her chair and waved Dorothea toward the empty seat she placed in front of her desk between lectures. Dorothea entered, poised as always, even when there was no one around to impress. She perched on the edge of her seat and smiled coyly—although Byleth had come to see it not as a condescending smile, but one that said Dorothea wouldn't be caught dead in a moment of embarrassing ignorance. She always knew what was going on, even when she didn't.

"Professor, I was wondering if you might give me something to do."

Byleth regarded her silently for a moment, until she remembered Dorothea found that discomfiting. "Such as?"

"Anything, really. Whatever you need to do this afternoon."

"Why?"

Dorothea cast a glance over her shoulder. "Seteth has been, well, _insistent_ that I sing in the Saint Macuil Day choir, and I would rather not."

Byleth folded her hands on top of her ledger and retreated to the calm of her thoughts. Or, the once calm. She was still growing accustomed to sharing that space. From the bookshelf along one side of the room, Sothis looked up from her examination of the book titles. She pointed to them with a questioning air, and Byleth supposed that was as good an idea as any other.

"I recently bought a set of books for studying the arcana," she said. "Their pages still need to be cut. If you want, you can stay here and do that."

Dorothea looked much happier than the occasion warranted. "That sounds perfect. Even with the two of us, it could take hours."

"Just you." Byleth opened her desk drawer and removed a page knife. "I'm going to the celebration."

"Oh." Dorothea accepted the knife, visibly confused. "I didn't realize…I didn't think you were particularly religious."

"I'm not. But I've never gone before, and Seiros's Day was interesting. I'm curious to see how Macuil differs."

Dorothea stifled a laugh, and Byleth cocked her head. "What?

"Nothing, it's just no one calls them by their names, not unless you want a dressing down from most-pious-in-the-room. Usually Ferdie."

"Macuil was his name, so that's what I call him." Byleth gestured to the bookcase. "The books are on that middle shelf over there."

She rose and tied the coin purse to her belt. She would deposit it in her personal quarters on her way to the cathedral. As she was preparing to go, Seteth strode into the room.

"Professor, have you seen—oh. There you are, Dorothea. Both of you, it's almost time for the celebration to begin. The choir has already begun warming up."

Byleth hesitated, then removed a small whetstone from her drawer and placed it on the desk. With a nod to Dorothea, she left her to the mind-numbing task of cutting open the pages of a ten volume primer on the white arts. Even agnostic as she was, Byleth would rather be at a celebration. She liked fun.

"Dorothea," Seteth said, "come along. The choir would be sadly lacking without you, especially considering Manuela's current…state."

Byleth stopped in the doorway. "Dorothea is staying here. I need some book pages cut for tomorrow's lecture."

Seteth's brow furrowed deeper than usual, and he looked between the two women as though he suspected conspiracy. "Are you covering a lecture for someone?"

"No. It's for my white arts seminar."

"You can perform white arts perfectly satisfactorily, I've seen you."

"Yes, but I can't lecture on it. I lack the necessary foundation." She indicated the very monastery around them, religious seat of all Fódlan. "Which is why I'm going to Macuil's celebration."

" _Saint_ Macuil!"

Seteth nearly choked on the words, but Byleth merely shrugged and left the room. After a glance at Dorothea, Seteth also left in a huff. On the walkway between the tea gardens and the cathedral, he sped up and passed Byleth, muttering something about making sure everything was in place. For a brief moment she walked in silence, and then the sound of hurried footsteps on stone caught her up from behind.

"Professor." Dorothea fell in beside her. "Did you mean that, about learning the church's teachings to understand the white arts?"

"Yes."

"But the arcana is something within us, innate. You don't see people drawing a connection between the goddess and the black arts. To say nothing of the dark."

"True, but I am curious. I've noticed all the best practitioners of the white arts are religious."

"Certainly not! Manuela's the best healer I've ever met, and she's one of the most impious people I know."

Byleth pursed her lips in thought. "I think Manuela is angry more than impious."

"Angry?" Dorothea came to a halt and fell behind before catching up on the grand bridge at the cathedral entrance. "Angry with the goddess?"

"So it seems."

"You can do that?"

"I don't see why not—but then, you're asking the wrong person."

Dorothea lapsed into silence as the cheerful roar of saint's day festivities engulfed them. She stayed close to Byleth and did not take a place among the choir, but when the time came for call and response singing, she leaned close and sang off the same folio as Byleth. Byleth had never seen her so subdued.

After the opening hymns, the evening passed in a blur of further song, food, and traditional dancing, which most of the students found dreary and stolid, although apparently they were amused by how closely Byleth paid attention to it.

"Like a field researcher studying animal behavior," she overheard Hubert musing to Edelgard.

At the end of the celebration the cathedral doors were thrown open, and the crowd spilled out into the late spring evening in two and threes, carried along by currents of laughter and murmured conversation. Byleth took a detour to her classroom and retrieved the books, and to her surprise Dorothea followed.

"You don't have to help me," Byleth said. "I was planning on staying up."

"I said I would, so I will." Dorothea paused as they each took an armful of books, and then, "Besides, I wanted to ask you something."

Byleth glanced at her and continued walking across the dark monastery grounds in silence. They passed through the shadows of stone columns and garden trellises, the moon drifting like a great fish among the clouds.

At last Dorothea said, "I don't have much faith in the goddess, but I do have faith in you, Professor. You went to the celebration to better help us as students, and I can't help but admire that. If you'll have me, I would like to join your white arts class."

"Do you have the time?"

A venomous little smile appeared at Dorothea's lips, and Byleth could see that from anyone else, Dorothea would have taken that as a jab at her love life, but her expression soon shifted back to contemplative as she discarded the offense.

"I can make the time."

"It starts at noon," Byleth said, and added, as Dorothea raised an eyebrow, "For Linhardt."

Dorothea laughed, and they stepped into Byleth's personal quarters. With the door propped open and lantern light spilling onto the green, they stayed up for the next two hours, cutting open pages to the sound of Dorothea's quiet humming and Byleth's whetstone along their knives.


	2. To Sublimate the Blade

White Clouds, Ethereal Moon

Byleth trudged along frozen roads, her gaze lost in the grey winter skies. Snow came early at the monastery, although after the day's dismal training exercise, the thin mountain air could not compare to the chill in her students' voices. Dimitri's earnest speculation about how they might better prepare for next time was tinged with fatigue, and even Mercedes had done little more than promise everyone hot chocolate once they were back within the walls of Garreg Mach. Through it all was a curious silence, though, a lack of something; there was no caustic counterpoint to Dimitri's masklike optimism.

Byleth stopped and turned. Along the ascending path to the monastery's front gates, her students stopped as well.

"Professor?" Dimitri said.

Byleth's eyes flickered through the group in a quick headcount. "Where's Felix?"

Dimitri and Dedue turned as one, and slowly the question trickled down through the exhausted ranks of the Blue Lions. Annette had seen him as they were packing up after the training exercise. Mercedes had offered to mend his torn sleeve. Ashe had lent him a whetstone.

But no one had seen him since actually leaving the mock battlefield.

Byleth pointed back up the winding road toward the monastery. "Take them home."

"Surely we should all go?" Dimitri said. "We can't leave one of our own behind."

Sylvain raked a hand through his hair. "If we all show up like a gaggle of mother hens, we'll never hear the end of it. Leave him alone to his snow angels."

A knowing smile passed from Sylvain to Ingrid to Dimitri, and Byleth was again surprised to remember they were old friends. For the most part, they didn't act like it. The only thing she could remember them agreeing on all semester was that Garreg Mach's first blizzard had been little more than a sprinkling of faerie dust by Faerghus standards. Sylvain had loudly booed anyone who showed up in the dining hall with anything warmer than a pair of gloves. Kingdom solidarity arose in the strangest places.

"Go home," she repeated. "We'll be back soon."

At that she walked away, in the midst of Dimitri trying to confirm some sort of contingency should she and Felix not be back by nightfall. Soon their voices faded, lost among the switchbacks and blankets of wet snow, and for a time all was quiet. Her footfalls echoed dully as she tramped through icepack turned to slush turned to mud.

She followed the trail back to the mock battlefield, the violence of their drilling already covered with a dusting of snow. There, in the center of the field, stood two figures. One of them was clearly agitated, and the other stood with shoulders slumped in forbearance.

As she drew near, Felix's voice cut through the winter wind. "Again."

He and a mercenary from one of the regular Seiros companies stood halfway up a gently sloped hillock. While the rest of the battlefield had been masked with snow, the area around them remained a mire of boot prints and churned snowmelt. Byleth stopped at the bottom of the rise and waited to be noticed.

"I said do it again." Felix waved his sword at the man's pole-arm.

"Your Lordship," the mercenary said, "I'm sorry. I don't know what I did. I just reacted."

Felix sheathed his sword and took a step closer. "And that's the problem. If you don't know what you did, then I don't know how to fix it. _Again._ "

The man fell into a miserable silence and gave Felix a short bow. He moved several paces away, around the curve of the hillock. Felix turned his back to him.

Felix, still not looking at the man, put a hand on his hilt and called out, "Now."

The mercenary raised his pole-arm and charged. When he was two paces away he gave a half-hearted battle cry, and Felix whirled. With an economy of movement born of obsession, Felix's blade was free of its sheathe and parrying before he'd even finished the turn. He brought his sword to the man's neck, only to let it drop to his side with a dissatisfied grunt.

"Again."

"Your Lordship, it was a lucky accident—I couldn't disarm you again in a hundred years."

"Don't flatter me. We're running this drill until we—oh." He had noticed Byleth. "Professor."

"Training's over," she said.

"Not for me."

Byleth pointed to the mercenary. "Dismissed."

The man gave them both a bow and hurried away. Felix watched him go with a sour twist at his lips. Slowly he came down to join Byleth, and together they headed for Garreg Mach once again. With just Felix in tow, Byleth expected to make it back without any needless small talk, so it was a surprise when he said, "I'm leaving your class."

Byleth glanced at him. "Why?"

"You always do this. Interrupt my training. At least Manuela or Hanneman will leave me to it."

"You won't improve."

Felix let out a frustrated huff, and they made it up most of the switchbacks in silence. As the front gates of Garreg Mach came into view, Felix asked, "Why not?"

There was a plaintive quality to his question that made it clear he wasn't challenging her. He knew it as well as she did, could feel the stagnation as his tireless hours of training produced ever-diminishing results.

Byleth didn't answer right away as they passed through the gates and into the deserted market, stalls closed for the day. At a nod from her the guards closed and barred the entrance.

She continued until they came to the fishing pond. The ice was scarred from where Raphael had been heaving rocks to test the thickness; he had been excited about the prospect of ice skating after hearing the Blue Lions go on and on about it during dinner the previous week. What strange lives these students led, a concoction of revelry and rivalry, training for war through games, designed to make them friendly enemies in the future. Did none of them see to the heart of these politics? Some surely did, like Felix, standing beside her now, his impatience torch-bright in the stillness of falling snow. If only he could have such a clear view of himself, too.

At last Byleth said, "You're saturated with training. There is such a thing as too much."

"No, there isn't."

The gentle whisper of snowflakes blanketed them once more as Byleth thought, and then she said, "Come to my quarters."

She headed off without bothering to see if he followed, but as she left the path to cut across the lawns, she could hear him crunching through the snow behind her. Inside her chambers she put the kettle on to boil over the fire and gestured for Felix to sit at her desk. She sat beside the hearth in silence.

When the kettle began to whistle, she pulled it off the fire and poured boiling water into a mug. From a high shelf she removed a hand-glazed sugar bowl—a gift from Annette and Mercedes—and began spooning sugar into the steaming water.

Felix watched, at first perhaps about to protest that he didn't like sweets, and then confused as she continued to dump spoonful after spoonful into the water.

When the sugar bowl was half-empty he asked, "Professor, what are you doing?"

She held his gaze as she stirred the mug, and then sat back to wait. Slowly the steam dissipated. After a time, Byleth banked her fire and opened her door a crack. The frigid winter night seeped in, and she handed Felix a blanket before settling back into her chair.

After nearly an hour, she reached out and gently put a finger to the side of the mug. It was ice cold.

"You have a burning desire to improve," she said, "and so you train well. But then you begin to cool off, and more training doesn't help. Instead it makes you rigid. You crystallize."

"Crystallize?"

Byleth took a tiny pinch of sugar and dropped it into the mug. Slowly the water began to transform, crystals creeping out along the surface. Felix watched the bizarre display until Byleth reached out and smashed the mug on the floor. What remained among the shattered pottery was a sugar crystal the size of her fist. She bent in her chair and handed it to him.

"You need to be flexible to train well, and you have become _in_ flexible."

Felix stared at the sugar lump in his hand, and then, for reasons Byleth could not imagine, he gave it a tentative lick. She found this vastly amusing.

He looked up at her. "Cute, but what is this about?"

"You need a change of pace."

"Like?"

"Like training in the arcana."

"The _arcana_? That's ridiculous—as far from swordplay as you can get."

"It's what Jeralt did with me."

Felix sank back into his chair, watching her thoughtfully. He still hadn't come close to besting her, and he would have no doubt jumped at a chance to train with her in a more straightforward manner, had she ever offered him one.

"Why the arcana?" he asked.

She rose and began to stoke the coals back into flames. "Jeralt calls it 'sublimating the blade'. To improve both quickly and meaningfully, you have to hit a point of inflexibility and then look at your training from a new angle. An unexpected angle. And then one day it will click, and you will transcend all your difficulties in a heartbeat."

"Sublimating?" Felix looked back down at the sugar rock. "What does that even mean?"

"I don't know." Byleth watched as Sothis hovered with her nose inches from the sugar in Felix's hand. Byleth had Sothis's voice in her head, Jeralt's words in her mouth. Some days she did wonder what she really was, amidst all her borrowed aspects. "I'm just doing what he did and saying what he said."

Byleth moved to close the door. Jeralt was older than he looked, and knew much more than he let on. She suspected he had forgotten some of the reasons he knew things in the first place, much like he had forgotten his own age. When she had asked him similar questions— why he made her study the arcana when it was much simpler to stab a man, why he made her use a book to duel swordmasters and a sword to duel warlocks—all he had said was that she must move forward until she couldn't any more, and before she started sliding backwards, move sideways. And then again, and again, and again, until she found herself on the opposite side of the problem.

"Will you study the arcana with me?" she asked.

Felix placed the sugar back in the bowl. He studied it for a moment, then got to his feet. "I'll try it."

"Come to my seminar this weekend."

  


Felix could hardly snap a spark into existence, but as Byleth expected, he took well to the violent theory of the arcana. Instead of dueling another person, he was dueling himself, and it had been easy to redirect his fervor.

"And this is why we don't begin with ragnarok." Byleth pointed to an iron box full of sand that she had arranged for her seminar. Most of it had glazed over, caught forever in dunes and whorls of cloudy glass after she had conjured a miniature ragnarok in the confines of the box. "As a spoken incantation, ragnarok isn't much more complicated than a basic fireball, but complicated thought aspects mean the size of ragnarok and bolganone can vary dangerously. You might immolate yourself if you haven't learned control. Questions?"

The seminar remained silent. Mercedes looked around, and when no one else spoke up she said, "I have one, Professor, although it's not related to black arts."

Byleth gestured for her to continue.

"Last week you explained that white arts are connected to beginnings, creation, and as you put it, infancy, which is why faith in the goddess can be so important, but when I borrowed some texts from the library, I couldn't find anything related to that. What did you mean by beginnings?"

Byleth's gaze slid to where Sothis hovered in the back of the classroom, half in shadow as she watched gentle snowfall through the window. Byleth thought of her own burgeoning skill in the white arts, and how it had seemed to coincide with her first meeting Sothis. These arcana seminars somehow always took a hard left into philosophy.

"That was my own understanding," she said. "If it didn't make sense then discard it."

Dorothea's hand half-rose as she waggled her fingers. "I thought it made sense, Professor."

Mercedes turned in her desk. "Oh, well, can you explain it?"

Mercedes, as always, was being utterly sincere. Dorothea, perhaps unintentionally, was being snitty. She had an almost defensive intolerance of the spiritual—but strangely enough, only the _sincerely_ spiritual.

Dorothea raised an eyebrow, and her smile was a touch too bright as she said, "It made sense because it removed the inexplicable. The arcana is always mysterious, but at least the black arts are rooted in something understandable. I liked how the Professor's interpretation of the white arts rooted them in humanity. How did you phrase it, Professor?"

Byleth was about to say it didn't matter when Annette's hand shot into the air, waving a piece of parchment covered in dense notes. "I have it! I wrote it down: the Professor said it's possible to see white arts as emergent from human faith because they're associated with beginnings, creation, and helplessness, relying on a higher power, whatever that power may be."

Byleth blinked. Was it possible to paraphrase and make something _more_ verbose than the original? That had not been what she said, but she couldn't say Annette misunderstood what she meant.

"Dark arts," Annette continued, "can be associated with endings, decay, and an instinctual understanding of death as natural."

"That was it," Dorothea said, and turned her gaze back to Mercedes. "The Professor was classifying all the arcana as aspects of human thought and emotion, which I found much more understandable than the goddess."

Mercedes frowned. "But you can't cut the goddess out of the white arts."

"The Professor's explanation didn't cut the goddess out—it rooted her in the human mind as well."

"That's—" Mercedes looked like she had been slapped. "That's blasphemy!"

Dorothea's eyes were tight at the corners. "So is speaking before sunrise on Saint Macuil's day, but here I am."

"Actually," said Sylvain, who hadn't even been paying attention before this, "speaking before sunrise on Saint Macuil's day is technically profanity. Ingrid's made that _very_ clear."

Before anyone could say more on the matter, the afternoon bell tolled across the monastery, and immediately half the room leapt from their seats. Mercedes and Annette remained, pointedly not looking at Dorothea as she left the room. Felix still sat in his far corner, focused on the whisper of flame he had been holding in his palm for the majority of the lecture.

"Dismissed," Byleth said.

Annette did her best to distract Mercedes as they left. Felix banished the spell, a tiny curl of smoke snaking up from his closed fist, and rose.

"I want to learn bolganone by the end of the month," he said.

"Fine."

He watched her for a moment, as though surprised she had relented so easily, and then left. At least the seminars were doing him some good. With everyone else, it was hard to tell. Byleth was by no definition a people person, and she was beginning to feel that her reach had exceeded her grasp. Emotions ran strangely high in her seminars, probably owing to the mix of students she had pulled in from the three houses. What if all she had at the end of her time as a teacher was Felix? One surly student, who would leave as soon as he could find better training elsewhere.

That would not do.


	3. Of Mastery and Mortality

White Clouds, Guardian Moon

Byleth stood in quiet contemplation of her bookshelf. Borrowed texts from the library filled most of it, and there were many. Her few personal volumes were clustered in the upper right-hand shelf. She paused, then reached up and put her finger on the spine of one book in particular. A sword forms manual—meant for a child, in that it contained nothing but illustrations aside from the title: _Of Mastery and Mortality_.

The book had been an old favorite of Jeralt's. Byleth had not touched it for some time, had not even thought of it. Now just the sight of its gilded spine filled her with an uneasy sorrow, but she pulled it down anyway. Today she would need it.

"Professor?"

Byleth turned, book in hand. Dorothea stood in the doorway, peering into the office with an amused half-smile, as though she had caught a glimpse beyond a veil of secrecy. Byleth gestured to the chair in front of her desk, and Dorothea came in. She sat and fixed Byleth with a look that said she knew why she had been asked here.

"What happened at the end of the seminar last week was nothing; Mercedes and I talked over tea later that day. I was upset about something Lorenz had said and let it out on her. It was actually something of a bonding moment."

Byleth pulled her chair out, the scraping of wood on stone strident in the silent office— which she still couldn't help thinking of as Jeralt's—and sat. She crossed her arms and gazed at Dorothea until the other woman shifted, and the amusement faded.

"Professor, you're doing that thing again, where it feels like you're looking right through me."

"I am."

"Why?"

"You should quit the white arts sub-focus."

Dorothea's brow furrowed. "I know Mercedes and I got a little heated, but it was nothing, really. She understands how Lorenz can be, and besides that I find her a little artificial at times."

"Some could say the same about you."

Byleth let the statement stand, the silence growing heavier the longer it went unqualified. Dorothea blinked and glanced at a quill on Byleth's desk.

"Trust me," she said, "I know Mercedes is one of the most genuine people here."

Byleth nodded and with an open hand indicated Dorothea as well. A small smile returned to her face.

"Why do you want me to quit?" Dorothea asked. "I've been enjoying the seminars, and I even convinced Manuela to give me private lessons one day a week—which was not easy. Herding cats has nothing on divas."

Byleth exhaled slowly. What she was about to say would hurt, and she didn't have the subtlety to soften the blow. "I want you to quit because you'll never be in the upper echelon of mages at Garreg Mach—white _or_ black arts."

Dorothea sat back, a mix of confusion and hurt on her face. "But at the start of the term…you said you thought it was a good idea."

Byleth folded her hands and looked down at the sword forms manual on her desk, a slim, seemingly innocuous little book. Quietly she said, "That was before Jeralt died."

Dorothea reached up and adjusted her hat. "What…what does that have to do with me?"

"Not just you. Everyone. The longer I'm here, the more I feel like we are not studying. It feels like we are preparing for…something." Byleth squeezed her eyes shut, and in that void she felt she could almost glimpse what she feared. Something dark and harrowing and demanding.

"And you think that's a reason to quit my white arts studies?"

"It's a waste of potential."

Byleth opened her eyes, pursed her lips. Why was explaining so difficult? Why could she not just show Dorothea was she meant? Or better yet, convey it with broad brushstrokes of thought and emotion, as she did with Sothis.

Her eyes flicked to the corner of the room, where the Beginning hung in midair, at rapt attention. Sothis widened her eyes and made a get-on-with-it gesture. She and Byleth had practiced this conversation beforehand, but now none of that was coming to mind. Slowly Byleth formed her next thought.

"Pursuing interests is…not a waste during peacetime. But I can feel peace coming to an end, and during what comes next, I'm afraid wasted potential will get you killed. You are a gifted singer. Do you feel the same way about the arcana as you do singing?"

Dorothea, as always, glowed with the compliment, and then Byleth's question sank in. She shook her head. "It's not difficult, but it doesn't come naturally, no."

Byleth counted on her fingers. "Annette. Hubert. _Lysithea_. They all are gifted, and you will never be like them, at least not anytime soon. So I want you to stop. Come train with me, instead."

An amused smile returned to Dorothea's features. "What's that supposed to mean? I already am studying with you."

"Not studying the arcana—training in swordplay."

This caught Dorothea by surprise. She straightened. "Swordplay? I'm not gifted in that, either. You think I could be like Petra or Ferdie or—oh goddess—Felix?"

"No. But I've seen you during classes. You comprehend sword forms as easily as you comprehend the arcana. Have you studied swordplay before?"

"Well, no." Her features brightened. "But there was a lengthy dueling scene in _The Man Over the Mask_ , and I was quite proud of the blisters I earned for that role."

She playfully waggled her fingers at Byleth, fingers that were quite smooth. At Garreg Mach, Dorothea had never trained seriously with a sword—yet she excelled.

"You're talented in both the arcana and swordplay, but not a virtuoso in either, and you know I'm right because you know what being a virtuoso should feel like. I want you to continue attending black arts seminars with Hanneman and train in swordplay with me."

Dorothea narrowed her eyes. "Because you feel _something_ is coming."

"Yes."

"What?"

"I don't know."

"To be honest, Professor, I don't like the idea of sticking someone with a sword and watching them die. I know that in the end, there isn't any difference between that and striking them with a bolt of lightning at thirty paces, but I'm selfish enough to admit I don't want to be there to see it."

"Fair, but irrelevant."

Dorothea sighed as it became clear Byleth's position, fortified by her unassailable-yet-vague unease about the future, would not be swayed. "What would I even do with this unwasted potential, as you put it?"

_Become very good at killing_. The words sat like bitter medicine on Byleth's tongue, for she feared that was exactly what would be needed in the coming months. Instead she said, "Become the kind of person who can survive."

Something hard glittered behind Dorothea's playful veneer. "Oh, I'm a survivor."

"Which is why I know you can do this. You understand death and sadness. Painful necessity." Byleth paused, and when Dorothea had nothing to say, she continued. "There is an ancient order within the knights of Garreg Mach called the Mortal Savants. It's long defunct, but I'm going to revive it."

Dorothea brightened. "Oh?"

This was apparently the right approach, which Byleth should have realized from the start. Dorothea had a love of the historic, romantic, and dramatic—the Order of Mortal Savants was all three.

"Just you and me?" she asked. "Reviving a bygone order on our own?"

"You are the first I've talked to, because you are equally gifted in magic and swordplay. I'm going to request two others join as well, but even if they refuse, I would like to train you."

"I'll think about it."

Byleth reached out and slid the sword forms manual across the table. "Take this. Jeralt gave it to me when I was a girl. You might find it useful."

Dorothea accepted the book with rote obedience familiar to Byleth from the classroom, but she paused as the first page flipped open to reveal beautifully illustrated, richly colored sword forms. Dorothea's eyes roved the page, taking in washes of blood depicted as whorls of cherry blossoms, fatal stroke patterns as autumn leaves upon river eddies. She closed it with a snap and looked up again.

"I _will_ think about it."

Byleth gestured that she was free to go. Consideration was all Byleth could ask for. Sometimes that was frustrating, but with Dorothea, Byleth thought it would be enough.


	4. Stretched Thin Over Madness

White Clouds, Lone Moon

Precision and speed. Those were the cornerstones of excellent swordplay, and Felix had them both in spades. Byleth had once watched him cut a wasp from the air in mid-flight, which was nothing compared to the way Flayn got him to cut firewood. But firewood and insects were not people.

Byleth parried, and Felix could do nothing more than twitch in an aborted attempt to counter-parry before her training blade came to rest against his throat. The tip rose and fell with his pulse, and he stared at her, breathing hard, sword at his side.

"I don't understand," he said.

It had been months since he had begun attending her arcana seminars, and she felt comfortable training him in swordplay now that some of his obsession had been redirected toward the black arts. In that regard, he was advancing in leaps and bounds, but when it came to swords, Byleth was an immovable object. The truth was Felix feared to kill people. But he didn't know it. Perhaps it was time to tell him.

"You're reluctant to kill," Byleth said. "It's good."

"I'm not—" Felix paused. His constant intensity was briefly displaced by hesitation. "I've killed plenty. And before that, I rode with my brother and _saw_ people being killed. It's not enjoyable, but it doesn't keep me up at night."

Byleth smiled. Between sword draw and death stroke, time slowed. At the last moment there was resistance—the natural hesitation to kill, and it had to be pushed through. That hesitation was there for almost everyone, even great swordmasters, although few of them realized it. Only a madman murdered without restraint, and if Felix had shown that proclivity, Byleth would be tallying his kills as closely as she tallied her faculty stipend. With madmen, their parody of restraint always disintegrated within a growing bloodlust.

"Have you been burned?" she asked.

Felix's eyes narrowed. "What?"

"By fire."

It was a stupid question, because she knew he had been. It had happened just last week while studying bolganone, which he still hadn't mastered. Byleth had a feeling it would be better to switch him to thoron, although she would let him try his hand at fire spells a while longer.

"Yes," he said, "I've been burned."

"And does _that_ keep you up at night?"

"You mean the pain?"

"No, the memory of being burned."

Felix scoffed. "Of course not."

"But if someone told you to burn yourself, you would fear it. You would hesitate. Killing is the same."

She could see him working it out. He still couldn't conjure anything more than a fireball, but maybe this blockage with fire arcana could be what propelled him through his difficulties in swordplay.

Byleth summoned a flame in her hand—dancing and merry, for she did not intend it to kill. She brought the knuckles on her other hand closer to the fire, the heat radiating across her skin, drying the sweat, singing the fine hairs on her wrist, and then she pushed closer. The skin blistered, and she pulled away.

Felix watched her with a look of strained forbearance. "What was that for? Idiocy."

"Now you try."

"I don't think so. I'm confident I can stick my hand in a fire just as well as you, and there's a tournament tomorrow."

Byleth studied him, searching for the words to convey how distance was an illusion. In that final hair's breadth between warmth and pain, there was infinite space. Within than tiny sliver was where swordmasters and mages did their work.

"A soldier's burden is not just to be killed, but to kill. I am more willing than you to get burned, and in the same way I am more willing to kill. Even if it's a small difference between us, it matters."

"Then how do I improve? I can't practice killing like I practice the arcana."

Byleth acknowledged the statement with a nod. That was the crux of swordplay; there was no real experience that wasn't gained on the edge of a blade, and that was hard to process, hard to reflect on through the fog of pain, fear, and guilt. With the arcana, all the feelings could be displaced, felt from an academic distance. It made experience easier to come by, but it also meant that mages became the worst sort of madmen.

"It's not studying in the same way as the arcana," she said.

"Then why am I even practicing if I can't improve outside of battle?"

Skill brought one to the pivotal moment more quickly, and each time, the barrier between a swordmaster and the death of another human being eroded a little more. Eventually it became thin, so thin one might be afraid it would disappear and leave them consumed by madness.

"Practice helps you find balance. So you don't become an animal." She met his eyes. "Like a boar."

Felix gave a disgusted sigh and sheathed his sword. To himself more than Byleth he muttered, "Is that all I'm here for? To remind me to be polite?" He raked a hand through his hair and looked around the deserted practice grounds. "Where are these other protégés anyway? When you agreed to spar if I joined this little project of yours, you made it sound livelier than getting beaten over the head with a training sword."

Byleth had run the idea of the Order of Mortal Savants past Felix the previous week, which he had accepted as blithely as the menu in the dining hall.

"One of them is undecided," Byleth said. "I haven't approached the other yet. For now, it's just us."

"I see." Quietly, so quietly she almost couldn't hear him, he added, "Could be worse."

Byleth returned her training sword to the rack, and together they made their way to the dining hall. In the end, Dorothea had not come, and it probably didn't matter. Jeralt was dead, and now Sothis was gone. In their absence, a wordless, howling unease told Byleth that this calm before the storm would soon end.

Felix was all she had, and she could only hope it would be enough.


	5. Old Happiness, Suffocating

Azure Moon, Ethereal Moon

A lack of something could be more disturbing than any sort of presence. A lack of sound. A lack of heart. A lack of sorrow.

Byleth stood in her old classroom, her footprints trailing through five years of accumulated dust, and she knew she should feel sorrow. But it eluded her. She had felt hot, sorrowful rage—a first in her life—when Jeralt died, but standing in the old destruction of Garreg Mach, all she felt were the happy memories of bygone days drifting about like ghosts. She felt regret, too, but one could not build a rebellion on regret. She needed to be forward looking. Yet those golden memories of better times clung to her, turned her gaze to the past and all the ways it might have gone differently.

"Professor?"

Felix and Dorothea stood in the doorway. Dorothea's hair was disheveled, one cheek streaked with char, and as Felix came closer Byleth caught the scent of singed hair and burnt skin on his clothes. The bandits squatting in Garreg Mach had not been given proper burial rites, although mass immolation was an honorable ceremony compared to what Dimitri had wanted done with them.

_A banner of entrails among the trees, a parade of heads on the palisade—there's a message beyond words: Get out of our way._

Byleth no longer consulted Dimitri regarding daily minutiae.

"Perhaps this isn't the time," Felix said, his attention roving the dilapidated classroom, "but I wanted to ask about our little side project. I'd like to continue, even if it's just me."

Byleth directed her gaze to Dorothea. "I don't think it will be."

Dorothea's breath caught in her throat, and then she said, "I'm sorry, Professor. So…so sorry. Even if I had accepted your offer, maybe it wouldn't have mattered—but maybe it would. And that's what kills me. If it's really not too late, I accept."

Felix stared at her in bemusement. "You? You're one of the Professor's other candidates?"

Dorothea sighed, and without her usual wit she asked, "Is that so difficult to believe, Felix?"

"I didn't think you had any interest in swordplay."

"And I didn't think you had any interest in the arcana." She looked back to Byleth. "You said there was a third?"

"Not yet. For now, this will work."

Felix swept back a lock of hair, his other hand on his sword hilt. "When do we start?"

"Now." Byleth handed him a broom and nodded for Dorothea to help push the desks to one side of the room so they could clean the other. "From now on, the Order of Mortal Savants will spend every waking moment together."

"And training?"

"Everything is training."

  


Byleth raised the green kerchief in her left hand, awarding a touch to Dorothea. Five years ago, that may have elicited a smile and a comment, but now Dorothea merely looked thoughtful.

Felix waved a hand in her direction. "Professor, that's nonsense. You can't allow that dancing idiocy to pass for swordplay."

Dorothea did have some of the most absurd flourishes Byleth had ever seen, but so far she had not misapplied them, and Byleth let them stand. It made her wonder what sort of training they had done in the Mittelfrank Opera Company and for what sort of shows, or if it was perhaps a callback to Dorothea's darker and younger days. Byleth had seen street fights that far outstripped battle in sheer brutality.

To Felix she said, "You know what passes for swordplay on the battlefield, Felix."

"Anything that lets you walk away," he growled, and fell back into opening position.

Dorothea studied him for a minute, then put her blade down and went to the water barrel. She was doing it on purpose to cool his heels, but again, it wasn't out of place. It had been nearly an hour since they began the day's training, and Felix had been pushing hard with no breaks. He was still better than Dorothea at swordplay, but as the gap between their skills grew narrower, he grew more disturbed.

After a moment he put his sword down as well and joined her.

"Where did you learn that?" he asked. "And don't say _stage right_ —half-swording wouldn't be interesting to watch from the audience."

Dorothea watched him over the rim of her cup and gave a noncommittal tilt of the head. "Depends on the audience."

She had grown less free with her quips, which Byleth took as a bad sign, although one she didn't know what to do about.

And then there was Felix. He had begun their training well enough, but Dorothea was improving more quickly than Byleth would have expected—so quickly that it seemed less about what she was doing and more about what Felix wasn't. He had been acting off, lately, and Byleth thought she knew why.

She looked around the training grounds, empty these days more often than not, the knights of Seiros subject to more brutal forms of training. This place had been Felix's demesne during their student days, his little sphere of control forged through blood, sweat, and unrelenting determination. Byleth wondered what this place felt like to him now. Wondered if it did not haunt him, as the old classrooms haunted her, with a sense of nostalgia that was almost suffocating.

She was not good at sentiment, but for the sake of understanding what was going on, she would try. "Felix. Come here."

He hung his dipper on the water barrel and crossed the sand pit. As he drew closer he said, "I know, half-swording isn't flashy. What pissed me off was when she pinned my sword beneath her foot. Who taught her that? You?"

"No." Byleth considered Dorothea for a moment, again wondering where she had learned such showy disarming techniques. "Felix, you haven't been using the training grounds. Why?"

He looked at her with a start, thrown by the non-sequitur. "What are you talking about?"

"I mean you're clearly practicing alone, outside our training sessions, but not here." That in itself was impressive, considering the three of them spent most of their time together, although it wasn't surprising coming from Felix.

He crossed his arms and cast his eyes over the churned, damp sand in the training arena. "In my room."

That would make sense. Felix had one of the larger private rooms designated for the nobles who were fussy about intermingling with commoners. Byleth had always found it strange that Felix had such a dormitory, but considering how little effort he put into anything that didn't interest him personally, he probably hadn't chosen the room himself. Whoever managed House Fraldarius had likely requested a room befitting Felix's station, and he hadn't given it a second thought.

"Why there?" she asked.

"I—I don't know."

As far as Byleth was concerned, that confirmed her suspicions. "Do you miss the inter-house tournaments?"

This time he was not thrown by the change of subject. "No. That would be pathetic."

Of course not. Felix wasn't one to pine after what was lost. And yet, if Byleth struggled to avoid those achingly happy memories of days gone by, then perhaps Felix did as well. This had been his sanctuary, amusing as that was to realize. In this place where he had passed so many hours in friendly competition with his classmates, could he effectively practice the bloody arts he would need to someday kill those same friends?

Byleth looked up at the skies threatening snow and decided that was enough training for the day.

"Pack up," she said.

Both Dorothea and Felix looked at her strangely. They were not yet even half-finished with their daily regimen.

"Is something wrong, Professor?" Dorothea asked.

"No. We're just done for today."

Byleth walked out, leaving them to snatch up their training blades and follow like goslings in her wake. They settled in a corner of the dining hall, and no one said anything more about the practice cut short, but the tension eased from Felix's shoulders. Byleth would have to find them someplace else to practice.

  


The clergy did their best to maintain regular worship times, but most of the knights preferred to wait until a majority of them could convene in between the haphazard campaigns, and when that might be was never a certainty. In the meantime, the clergy put their efforts into restoring the ruined altar, setting right all that had fallen into disarray, and the cathedral was often a deserted, echoing place. It felt more like a mausoleum than a place of worship.

As such, Byleth did not think they would mind her commandeering the outer balcony. The following day, she led her savants to practice in the gently drifting snowflakes that had begun to fall during the night.

Dorothea and Felix stood stock still, the snow gathering in feathery clumps along their shoulders and outstretched arms, winking diamond-like in their hair. Both were blindfolded, and both held their training blades in close contact with the other.

Sword instructors loved to prattle on about practicing until the sword became an extension of the arm, but rarely did they say what that meant. Jeralt had explained it to Byleth as the same understanding of her limbs that let her walk in darkness, eat with her eyes closed, or reach out and grab something without actually looking at it. He had never blindfolded her, but in retrospect it seemed exactly like the sort of thing he would have done.

She watched Felix and Dorothea maintain their standoff, each exerting pressure on the blade of the other, knowing that as soon as one of them managed to slip the unseeing guard of the other, that was it.

Dorothea attempted to counter-parry, but as soon as her blade was no longer in contact with Felix's, he dipped his training sword, evaded her parry, and touched his blade to her shoulder.

"Point to Felix," Byleth said. "Reset."

The rules were quite simple. At the moment, Dorothea was only allowed to attack if she could force Felix to break contact between their swords, and Felix was trying to maintain constant contact. It was also extremely difficult, and Byleth was in the middle of reassessing how effective it was as an exercise when Dorothea dropped her guard and pulled her blindfold up.

"Professor, I can't do this."

Felix removed his blindfold as well. "Dorothea, we've hardly begun."

"Not the drill, which I will say feels faintly ridiculous." She waved a hand toward the grand archway that led into the cathedral. "I mean the noise."

The sound of choir practice echoed from within the cathedral. Mercedes made a point of never missing a gathering, and Annette made a point of never letting her go alone. These days, they were usually the only two in attendance. In her student days, Dorothea probably would have joined them, and Byleth supposed that was the problem. Again, that potent blend of melancholy and bygone happiness was making it difficult for her savants to focus.

"Do you…" Byleth paused, not quite sure what she was getting at. "Do you want to join them?"

"No. I meant what I said; I can't do this, can't concentrate." She brought a hand to her forehead, eyes closed. "It's like a melody stuck in my head; I can't focus on what I'm supposed to be doing."

Byleth nodded slowly. "I see."

She didn't see, not entirely, but she understood she would need another place to practice—a place that would not haunt them with memories of happier times. Perhaps a place that had never held any happiness at all.

  


It was a quiet, windless day. Sound carried far in the winter stillness, and the distant chatter from the dining room mingled with a chorus of voices from the cathedral, along with the shouts of off-duty knights drilling in the training grounds. But those sounds were muted, muffled by an even greater quiet that draped itself over the graveyard.

Byleth raised the red kerchief in her right hand, awarding a touch to Felix. That brought him three touches ahead of Dorothea, although he and Byleth both knew Dorothea had managed more impressive reversals than that. Dorothea and Felix were both on form today, and three points could pass in the blink of an eye.

Byleth looked down at the ring she wore around her thumb, which she had been twisting mindlessly as she watched her savants. She had not known what to do with the ring, where to put it for safekeeping. It was her last piece of Jeralt, a final, fragile connection between them, and she felt oddly distracted when she could not be sure of its safety, so she had taken to wearing it.

She still did not know what to do with it. As far as she could tell, she was not a being of love, at least not the kind that necessitated a ring. But she did love her students. Otherwise, they would not be practicing here right now, and the thought of what they were practicing for would not be so painful.

The search for a place to train had been difficult because everywhere they went, the monastery was filled with aching memories of happier bygone days. It was suffocating. Ironically, after so much death and too many dead to bury in the little graveyard, no one ever visited, and it became the perfect place to practice. Here, the only painful memories were her own, and somehow, the soft sadness of deaths long gone was comforting compared to the strife that surrounded them now.

Byleth thought back to what Claude had told her in the wake of Jeralt's death, in what may have been the most genuine she had ever seen him, his devil-may-care panache replaced with a vulnerable sincerity. Even amidst tragedy, the world turned, and there was comfort in that.

Byleth raised her green kerchief and awarded Dorothea a touch.


	6. The Silent Suffering of Metamorphosis

Azure Moon, Guardian Moon

Felix observed the grim scene with dispassionate calm, sword arm slack at his side. Dorothea covered her mouth with one hand, eyes wide in shock. Byleth watched in silent expectation. Around them, the battle within Garreg Mach town was still winding to a close, the cries of dying soldiers drifting through the hazy air, but right now none of that mattered. For Byleth, this intensely personal moment playing out before them was the sea change. The long awaited metamorphosis.

In front of them, Marianne and Hilda knelt in the shadow of overhanging eaves, surrounded by a slurry of blood and muddy earth. Marianne's white robes were filthy, and half-buried in the mud beside her was a training sword. It was hard to believe that had been the instrument of such destruction.

Hilda laid a hand on her shoulder and said, "It wasn't me, Marianne. I'm right here."

Marianne's silent, shuddering sobs grew gentle, and her shoulders stopped rocking. She unburied her face from her bloody hands. Half hidden in an alley between houses lay the corpses of two knights. One bore the tabard of the Knights of Seiros, an ugly gash at the joint where neck and shoulder met, wearing armor with a profile unsettlingly similar to Hilda's House Goneril set. The other knight, or what remained of him, was Adrestian.

Around Marianne were strewn the ruins of what had once been that man—armor rent open and shorn through in a dozen different pieces. He was distended, unraveled, utterly deconstructed.

Hilda put her other hand on Marianne's cheek and turned her face away from the dead Knight of Seiros. "That wasn't me."

Marianne's flat whisper drifted through the cries of triage crews calling for healers. "But I thought it was."

"So you did what you had to." Hilda glanced at a dismembered shoulder, the sheen of bone glistening in the shadows. "And I'm glad you did. You don't have to feel bad about it."

Marianne paused, and then, "I don't."

"Oh." Hilda was only momentarily off-balance before she bounced back to form. "Well then, next time I'll let you go knocking heads with the Professor, how's that?"

Marianne didn't answer, but took a shaky breath and got to her feet. There were few souls that had overcome more sorrow than Marianne's, and that sorrow rode the edge of her blade like a lightning strike. Byleth had seen that potential in her, had been waiting for Marianne to see it in herself. To have a reason to.

Marianne looked over her shoulder, tears still leaking from her eyes, but her voice held a peace Byleth had never heard before.

"I'll join, Professor. Just tell me how."

Byleth held out a hand and grasped Marianne's blood-slick fingers. "You already have."

Byleth's savants were together for the first time since she had envisioned them over five years ago. Portentous timing. She sensed something grave on the horizon. Perhaps this time they would be ready for it.


	7. The Capitulation of Death

Azure Moon, Lone Moon

Byleth had a feeling, and if there was one thing she had learned since coming to Garreg Mach what felt like a lifetime ago, it was to never ignore the feeling. As the vanguard advanced along the great bridge, as Byleth's voice went hoarse and her nose filled with the metallic tang of blood, she kept half of her mind back. Looking. Searching. Seeking the root of that disquiet.

Behind her in the command tent, biding their time through a restless calm, the Order of Mortal Savants waited. Felix stared at the vanguard with barely leashed fury. He had grown the most predictably of the three, his swordplay and black arts honing one another to a razor's edge, but to Byleth's grim pleasure, Dorothea had also burgeoned into a terrible power. Her finesse with the black arts etched her blade with hexes so potent that Byleth had seen her hack through a knight's breastplate as though it were woven reeds. Dorothea's own power seemed to disturb her, and she had not embraced it with Felix's cool logic or Marianne's quiet resignation.

Byleth raised her bicolored battle flags, signaling Dimitri at the far end of the bridge. A fluttering of scarlet and white in the wind returned to her, and then a harried scout broke free from the back of the melee. He spurred his horse toward her, and Byleth had time to observe the absurdity of a bridge so large that it required a horse to traverse. It was not just Garreg Mach that seemed to have been built for giants; Fódlan itself seemed a land of absent colossi, where humankind dared go only because they did not understand the shadows they walked in.

The scout stopped short outside the command tent and swung down, breathing hard and fast.

"Commander Byleth, there's an auxiliary entrance to the bridge. Ladislava has sent a flanking force around to catch us in the rear."

Byleth squinted, searching the expanse of a bridge so wide it was dizzying. At last she saw it, a small door set in the side of the bridge, lost in the sheer scale of its architecture. It looked like it should lead to nothing but empty air and a swift drop to the rose-colored river below.

This was pivotal. Dimitri had committed to a final assault—if he was caught in a hammer-and-anvil attack now, it would be disastrous. It was time her savants enter the fray. Byleth's flags fell to the stonework as she took off at a sprint. Felix loped easily at her side, and she could hear Dorothea and Marianne behind them.

As they approached a shallow stairwell before the door, she shouted over the fever pitch, "Dorothea, Marianne, shatter; Felix with me through the breach."

The air went frigid, so cold Byleth's teeth ached, and then spiked into a blistering heat wave. The wooden door split top to bottom under the temperature shift, the hinges popping off like festival fire crackers, and Byleth crashed through in a cloud of ash and cinder. She rolled left as Felix dashed through the flames. A narrow L-bridge stretched out before them. At the far junction, an archer had leveled a ballista in their direction.

Felix slowed his pace marginally, until all four members of the Order of Mortal Savants were pelting toward the ballista as one group, one target, one mind. Byleth's focus narrowed, watching as the man winched back the firing mechanism, laid a spear-sized bolt on the firing rail, and sighted on them.

Without a word they scattered, and the ballista bolt went singing through the space between them. Dorothea shouted, and a branch of lightning flashed through the air, so close Byleth could smell its cold heat. It lanced the archer through the knee, and he cried out, collapsed against the ballista, and then Felix was there. On the draw he cut the man's throat before kicking him off the ballista's firing seat.

"Can anyone use this?" Byleth asked.

Silence all around.

"Slag it."

She stood back as Dorothea pulled a column of light from the sky, screaming down like a pillar of raw starshine. It shattered the mechanism, and Byleth took a moment to gather her wits. While the auxiliary bridge was slender, it looked too sturdy for them to collapse on short notice. That left a bottleneck as their only option. She hated stalling, but there was nothing else for it.

"We make a stand here," she said. The ballista had been built on a slight incline and would serve as their high ground. "Hold them back until Dimitri can break through and crush them from behind."

No complaints. Byleth inhaled deeply, pushed aside the tang of blood and lightning, and centered herself. Hurried enemy ranks fell into position at the far end of the bridge. Soon they would make their flanking assault, and the Order of Mortal Savants was all that stood before them, but for now there was a moment of calm, stolen between the gales of the storm.

In the distance, at the back of the flanking force, a mounted figure rode into view. His hair shone flame-bright in the sunshine, his armor resplendent with a half-cape snapping in the wind. Dorothea inhaled softly. Byleth's grip tightened on her sword.

"Change of plan," she said. "We assault now."

"Why?" Marianne asked.

"Because that's Ferdinand von Aegir."

The Great Bridge of Myrddin was a key tactical location, and Byleth had known that Edelgard wouldn't let it fall without a fight, but she hadn't been expecting Ferdinand. The man knew only enough fear to increase his joy in battle. He would not be easily swept aside.

Byleth shared a glance with her savants, and then they were off. They knew what to do.

She, Felix, and Marianne sprinted down the narrow bridge, while Dorothea hung back. The sound of her conjuring wove through the sounds of battle, an aria of ethereal beauty and destruction. The skies grew red as harsh, bloody light was cast across the clouds. Like the hump of a leviathan emerging from the deep, a scorching meteor pressed itself through the folds of reality. It hung over them like a second moon, ominous, deathly, and at the far end of the bridge Ferdinand laughed. The firelight was like blood in his teeth.

He leveled his lance, and the company charged, funneling into the bridge. The meteor emerged in totality, allowing the briefest glimpse of the void it came from before the fabric of reality sewed itself back up. For a heartbeat it hung in the air, weightless, and then it hurtled into the stonework in a scorching explosion. The entire bridge rocked, and then Byleth was in the thick of it.

She and Felix danced between remnants of burning stone, her sword snaking through the smoky air alongside his lightning strikes. Adrestian infantry surrounded them, but after Dorothea's spell only half were still standing.

Yet four savants against a tide was still impossible. A blur through the smoke and Felix stumbled. He lay on his side with a javelin in his gut, his cheek pressed against the ashen stone, eyes rolling around to see what had struck him. Byleth turned back as Ferdinand emerged from the smoke, and time slowed, then stopped. The world went gray.

Every time she did this, Byleth could not shake the feeling that she was no longer in the world, but watching it from within the mind of another being, one greater than herself. With a painful exertion of will, she parted the veil of the past and moved back. It was always an uncanny experience, for although she still had the sensation of free-will, she did not actually have it. She would step where she had stepped, kill whom she had killed, and see what she had seen, as though her mind and body had been splintered.

Time renewed. The breaching meteor still burned in the sky, and Byleth came to understand why it had felt like such an ill omen. They fought for hours in its bloody light, and for hours she watched her savants be slain.

Dorothea, her head snapped back with an arrow through one eye, the other staring up at the sky like a dull green marble.

Felix, his sword arm charred to the bone, lashing out mindlessly with his left hand even as he slipped into a state of shock.

Marianne, freezing in place as an Adrestian cavalier bore down and she realized the only option was the cut the horse off at the knees, trampled seconds later.

Byleth, staring down at a lance through her breast, and looking up to see that the smile on Ferdinand's face was not one of joy. Had it ever been?

And so it went. Byleth had never used her connection to the Beginning so personally before, so many times. It had always been at the grand scale of battles, of shifting shield walls and redirecting cavalry. This felt like reaching into the guts of creation, coming up with her hands full of viscera over and over and over. Her savants acquired a haunted look, as though time had not been completely turned back, as though something in them still knew they should be dead, as though the body remembered even if the mind forgot.

Through ugly trial and error Byleth hammered out perfection. She directed her savants with a touch, a nod, a shout, until they tore through the Adrestian ranks with the cold rage of a thunderstorm. There was fear in every soldier's eye as they fell, watching the impossible slowly stitch itself together: four mortal savants slaughtering an entire company.

At last only Ferdinand remained, and his smile seemed an embrace of all that might come to him. The battle still raged on the main thoroughfare of the bridge, but on this auxiliary passage it seemed like time remained in Byleth's thrall.

"Edelgard has always been obsessed with you," Ferdinand said. His grip tightened on his lance. "I am a little envious, to be frank. I will just have to impress her with my skills on the battlefield."

Dorothea took a step forward, wading through the dead. "Oh, Ferdie. You opposed Edie for so long... I had real hopes for you, you know? Now you're following her. Is that your duty as a noble? Follow your master when they say to heel?"

That smile again, like an ever-present shield—but what lay beneath? Ferdinand laughed, and Byleth knew she would never know.

"I will not try to explain my duty or hers," he said. "You would not understand. I wish you could. Anyway, no time for idle chitchat."

He spurred his horse forward, a desperate and furious charge, and even now Byleth was not sure of victory. She had reached this point once already and gone back, unable to kill Ferdinand when she hoped to protect him. But he would not be swayed.

The sword of the creator unfurled like a pennant in the wind, snapping out as Byleth leapt to the side. Ferdinand gave a strangled cry as the sword coiled tight around his neck, and Byleth pulled him from the saddle. He landed badly, his lance arm pinioned beneath him, the shoulder jutting up, clearly shattered and only held in place by his armor.

Ferdinand's breath hissed out in a disbelieving exhalation. He rolled to his knees, fumbling to draw his short sword with his left hand, but no sooner had he awkwardly freed it from the sheathe did Felix stomp on the flat of the blade, pinning it to the stonework.

"Ferdinand." Byleth felt the words she had spoken once already this day welling up like bile. "It's over. Don't do this."

Ferdinand cried out, a sound of fearful determination, and rose to his feet. "Retreat, Ladislava!" he said, bellowing to the murky sky, still hazy with Dorothea's casting. "Tell Her Majesty about this!"

Byleth yanked on the sword of the creator, still wrapped tight around Ferdinand's neck. His gorget protected him from the jigsaw blades along the sword's length, but he could not free himself from its snare.

An Adrestian battle horn sounded from the bridge proper, and Ferdinand seemed to wilt. He whispered words that had confused Byleth the first time she heard them, but now she understood were an interpretation of Ladislava's horn call. "Already sent a messenger, can't let you die while I flee… In that case, please…"

"Ferdinand—"

He pulled a boot knife and whirled, plunging the blade toward Felix's gut. It had not worked the first time, although Byleth had not been able to stop him herself. This time, too, she watched as Dorothea swatted the thrust away and sunk her blade into a gap in Ferdinand's armor, opened during his fall from horseback. The two gasped in unison, and Dorothea fell to her knees. She reached out, hands hovering over Ferdinand's pale features but unable to bring herself to touch him.

"Ferdie! Ferdie, why would you—I—"

"Even if I die," he whispered, his gaze unfocused, "you must protect this area."

His eyes went dull, and the tension bled from his body. From the bridge a great cheer arose, followed by the sound a Kingdom harrying horn. The Adrestian forces were retreating, and Dimitri did not intend to let a single one of them escape.

Felix stepped forward, sword arm rock steady. "The survivors will be desperate. They'll try to flee through here when they see it's just the four of us."

Byleth remained focused on Ferdinand's lifeless body. Even now she wanted to go back, to save him. But there was no salvation for those who didn't want it.

"We'll hold the line," she said.

As the first panicked soldiers appeared at the junction between the main and auxiliary bridges, Byleth unwound the sword of the creator and snapped it back into rigid form. Dorothea left her sword in Ferdinand's chest, instead squaring up behind Byleth, sparks dancing between her fingertips. Marianne left off where she had been trying to heal him and drew her training sword, which she had refused to give up in favor of something more lethal.

This was the end, the terror-driven soldiers before them a foregone conclusion. They held the line, standing in formation around Ferdinand's body. Byleth could not shake the feeling that she was protecting him, even now.

***

The phantom scent of blood and smoke was still in Byleth's nose as she led her savants through the front gates of Garreg Mach. Aside from a brief argument about whether they should bring Ferdinand's body, they hadn't said a word during the journey home. Ferdinand had not come with them.

As they walked through the market, Byleth dismissed them with a flick of her fingers, and it did not take long before she was alone, walking across the lawn outside the classrooms. She stopped in the middle of the green and stared at the Blue Lions' lecture hall. The other two halls stood empty now, although sometimes she still spied Dorothea in the Black Eagles' room, gazing at the emptiness as though the ghosts of days gone by could still be seen. Dorothea did not inhabit the space so much as mourn it, and Byleth knew that Dorothea would be taking this the hardest. Perhaps it had been a mistake to dismiss them.

Byleth changed clothes in her quarters, stalwartly ignoring the siren call of her bed, and headed back out into the monastery in search of Dorothea. She checked the dorms first, then the dining hall and the cathedral, and finally the war room. She got the feeling she was perpetually one step behind. On her way to check the greenhouse, she at last found her at the fishing pond, standing at the end of the dock.

Dorothea turned at Byleth's footsteps, her expression melancholy, introspective. They stared at one another for a time, Byleth uncertain what even could be said, until finally Dorothea broke the silence.

"It's a frightening sensation, Professor. To feel the momentum of past decisions pushing you headlong into a future you know you'll regret. You made it clear this would happen eventually, but I was hoping you were wrong. I don't know why. You're never wrong…" Her eyes went unfocused, lost in memory. "And Ferdie was there. We killed Ferdie, Professor. He used to be our friend. Do you remember those days?"

"Yes."

Byleth could say nothing else. She hoped that one word could convey the crushing, nostalgic weight of those memories. There was nothing more to say to her students, nothing more to teach them. She had done her best to prepare them for what she hadn't been able to see coming, only feel.

Footsteps sounded on the dock behind her, and she turned to find Felix and Marianne. Her savants had grown accustomed to one another, by necessity at first and later by choice, and she was not surprised to see them draw strength from one another in the face of tragedy. It was why she had gathered them in the first place.

Felix glanced at Marianne, who held his gaze for a second longer than Byleth would have expected, long enough for some unspoken communication to pass between them.

"Professor," Felix said. "What was that?"

Byleth looked between them and back at Dorothea. All were watching her. "What do you mean?"

"You've been uncannily skilled since our student days," Felix said. "But that was something else. The battle on the auxiliary bridge…" He closed his eyes, shook his head, as though dispelling an uncomfortable thought. "There were times I should have died and…didn't. You knew what to do."

Again Byleth had nothing to say but, "Yes."

She could tell they didn't understand, and she couldn't explain. Even now she only had a half-formed, instinctual understanding. It would have to do for them as well.

Byleth looked each of them in the eye. "I chose you, and so you will be there for all of it. It will get worse from here. But I will not let you die. Death will have no sway over you. Both a gift and a burden."

Quietly Marianne asked, "Why us?"

"Because I couldn't choose everyone. Because somehow I've always known that the true, final cost of the war would be killing those we love." Byleth's voice grew quiet in the twilight. "And because I can't carry that alone."

END


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